On Jan. 28, 1986, seven astronauts “slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.” America’s space program was never the same.

They died as they slipped the surly bonds of Earth. The last words of that sentence, haunting words, were written by John Gillespie Magee Jr., an American airman and poet who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940, before the United States entered World War II. He was killed the following year in a midair collision over England. He was all of 19…